I'd also like to point out, yes I did take the sticker off the top radiator hose, (it's flapping about in the pictures above!)

Rear brakes. Tuesday this week I was meant to go to another campus for work, however a truck crash blocked the ring road and another truck accident blocked another road. Short story I turned around and went home and found this waiting for me.

Nearly all of my brake parts had arrived. Excellent! I've just checked FedEx and my front hoses are also at home, having arrived this morning.

I'll do a bit of a write up next week, but everything changed over nicely.

Reason for the brake bits being ordered...

I'm off to Aaron's tonight and I picked up the struts out of my old yellow parts wagon during the week to sort them out this weekend. Hopefully I'll get a few more things ticked off my mental list before Monday.

I'm trying to get some pictures up on photobucket this afternoon but it is playing funny buggers. I'll do a write up on the rear brakes instead.

health warningBrake dust can be extremely nasty. Much like steel dust, it can contain carcinogens and all kinds of stuff that you don't want inside you.

Brakes with the drum off. Drivers side.

Top of the shoe with the most wear.

Take the spring off that is about half way down on each shoe, then remove the top and bottom springs.
Everything comes off coated in brake dust.

take this mechanism (it screws in and out between the shoes), and roughly mark where it was screwed up to. To the best of my knowledge, its to set up the handbrake/shoe position.

health warningBrake dust can be extremely nasty. Much like steel dust, it can contain carcinogens and all kinds of stuff that you don't want inside you.

Shoe off, you can see where the wheel cylinder was leaking. Hence, a soft brake pedal.

The drivers side only has one brake line screwed into the wheel cylinder, through the backing plate. Use a brake line spanner to avoid rounding off the head of the threaded fitting.

Remove the two nuts as well holding the wheel cylinder. If the bolt itself begins to unscrew, that is ok. (you'll see why later).

These are the double threaded bolts. The passenger side wheel cylinder came fitted with new ones, the drivers side did not. I suggest re-using the old one with the old nut rather than trying to do a rough job with a new, non double threaded "generic" bolt. Once you screw the bolt into the new wheel cylinder, you can tighten it up with a brake line spanner on the nut.

Sounds like gobbledeegook but it makes sense once you take one apart and put a new wheel cylinder back in.

Wheel cylinders.
note: never assume both sides of the car will have the same wheel cylinder. 929's and RX-4s have a distinct left and right.

They almost look identical, but the drivers side has the top thread for a bleed nipple, the passenger side has two threads for brake lines. There is no bleed nipple.

new passenger side wheel cylinder. Note it has the bolts already.

There were no nuts in the box though so don't loose your old ones.

Probably the trickiest bit was getting the brake lines into the new wheel cylinder. The tubing has a bit of give in it, but remember, this is 30+ year old metal, try not to bend it too much or it will fatigue.

New shoes vs old shoes. See how the old ones are a bit squarer in how the material is bonded to the shoe itself. The old one has a bigger pad area as well

It's a poor photo but you can see how the new shoe has longer linings bonded to it. Hopefully this doesn't mean anything (ie the lining dragging etc)

This is how I put the shoes back in. It may not be the right way, but I found it works.
1. Put both shoes into the notch down at the bottom of the brake area.
Like this, then push through the pin from the back of the backing plate, slide over the collar, spring and top collar, then turn the pin so that the top collar retains the spring. There are two springs and pins (one for each shoe). Do both or else the shoe will fall out.

Put the bottom (the skinnier) spring in). You may need long nose pliers, etc. I find swearing helps.

The next bit is tricky.
The mechanism that I pointed out before:

Put this back in between the shoes. It will only go one way. You may need to wind it in or out. I found that winding it all the way in, then putting the top spring in made it a lot easier. I could then adjust the ratchet mechanism (I'm not sure that ratchet is the right word, but it will do) after I had the top spring in.

You want this:
Spring in, ready to be sprung? Strung?

Result:

And

Now my handbrake cables are pretty stretched, but basically there is a mechanism at the handbrake lever where you can wind the cable in. What you want is a handbrake that should only take two clicks to be on, three clicks at the most to be jammed on tight.

Put the drum on, then try the handbrake. Because I wound on that rod to its lowest setting, I had to spin the ratchet (!) nut a few times with a flat bladed screw driver.

In the end I had it so that the pads were not dragging against the drum when the handbrake was off, but the handbrake jammed the pads on tightly when the handbrake was on. Once the car is mobile, I'll adjust it all again and bed the shoes in. Where I made the mark on the adjustment rod was roughly where it was when I had finished, minus a few mm (given that they were used shoes and I replaced them with nice fat new ones), so I think I was pretty close to the previous settings.

I thought asbestos was no longer used in Australian brake pads/ linings ? Anyway I normally hose down brakes prior to pulling them apart so there isnt any dust about. Will be doing something similar once I have the diff reco'd.

Yes, but the pads and shoes (and diff) came out of a car that had been sitting for a while so I was a bit wary.
The replacement parts are from the US so I was a bit iffy of them as well.

purpose: originally I wanted to do the Great Escape rally. I still want to do it, but the wagon needed a lot of tidying up in terms of fixing things that had been done poorly or preventing further problems cropping up (ie rust in the doors). I'm going to get it all back together as a road going car, cruise for a bit and do a few short road trips with it. If it has enough grunt to cope with long distances I'll look into doing the Great Escape with it, otherwise I'll move on to something else.
I thought doing the Great Escape rally in the wagon was a good idea because basically, its a 929 wagon, so if I really crash it, I won't be as upset as I would be if I crashed an RX-3 or 1300 and secondly, because the rear load space would be very handy for all the gear you have to pack (ie camping stuff).
Spac off Ausrotary inspired me with his attempt at the Great Escape a few years ago in a Volvo wagon.

- drilled out two rusty bolts from the chin apron so that I can get it painted up and fitted

- swapped out the rear rubber brakeline hose for a new one

- put the front struts back together after I borrowed some spring compressors

- put the front brakes back together

- put the drivers side strut in (ran out of time for the passenger side)

- managed to undo the flared nuts on the brake hard lines that lead down to the front calipers.

So firstly I got everything laid out to swap the brake hoses over and the struts

Then when I went through the boxes of hoses, I realised that with the front two brake hoses, when you order a top hose, you get one hose. However when you order the bottom hose, you get a whole length of hoses with a simulated joint at the half way mark so that you can clip it to the strut. Cool! Only problem is, now I have two spare top hoses. (or rather, Aaron will be getting some top hoses for his coupe )

From L-R: New Top Hose, Old hose (top and bottom joined together), New hose (I ordered a bottom hose but it came as one whole hose with a simulated join in the middle, so if you are ordering brake hoses from AC Delco, keep this in mind, you only need to order the bottom hose for the front brake lines).

Note: Even though the rear brake hose has a different part number, it is the same as the top front brake hose.

Old rear hose and new hose:

Slightly different in length, the fittings are also slightly different:

someone ie Aaron, did the flange nuts up on the hard brake lines at the front RIDICULOUSLY tight for mr scrawnyverse me.

I borrowed Aaron's flare nut spanner (wrench for you yanks) but it was only successful in rounding off the head a bit more. *sigh*

In the end I left everything to soak in some Penetrene, then cracked the nut at the other end of the brake line (where they join up to a distribution block) and removed the whole brake line. I just cut the old rubber hoses off the front brakes as they were a bit frayed in places and I have spare upper hoses anyway (see post above).

You can see that the spanner is not quite making enough face contact which is probably why the head was rounding off.

So what I did was slid a ring spanner all the way along the line

Then crack the nut

Much better fit.

Once I got both nuts off, I filed the head surfaces back into shape.

The hard lines are back in the car waiting for me to fit the passenger side strut. Once that's in, I can screw up the brake hoses, run some fluid through them and check for leaks and then bleed it.

Has this been booked in for an exhaust system yet?
Or did you want to salvage a used muffler system from the white parts car?...or my pile of used mufflers. I believe we can cobble together some useable stuff and get it tacked together your side of town.

As I see it this is the one thing holding it back from "Hoedown"...well apart from rego.

Also its nearing time to paint those panels. Is it ok to paint in your current garage location or will this be frowned upon?

Let me know so I can keep a weekend free (not this one unfortunately).

Righto.
Weather, travelling and other stuff have got in the way over the last few weeks, plus I'm waiting on my rubber door seals which still haven't shown up (they're a week late - thanks Rare Spares ).

Anyhoo, I decided to do something small to keep my motorvation up, so while the sun was out, I got out some stickers that my long suffering partner made up for me.

They're to replicate the factory stickers I found while disassembling the yellow parts wagon.

H is for the diff housing, A is for each of the front uprights.

Before shot.

Ta Da!

Before

And on the other side

Too easy. I also met a neighbour for the first time after we realised (through another forum) that we literally live across the street from each other. Too easy!

Hoges - I have more stickers to give you for your coupe and there are some there for anyone else who wants some for their RX-4 or 929.

Things in progress:
- I'm waiting on some tie rods to come back from being zinc plated

- I'll have to get the front windscreen out as I want to rustproof the frame

- fix the headlight and under-dash wiring, I started on a new loom for the front headlights today.

yeah I think I may go back to rare spares, cancel the order, get money back and sort out a paypal account and get some from those guys. I thought about it, then rung rare spares and they said they'd have them in within a week.

- I'll have to get the front windscreen out as I want to rustproof the frame

As I am finding out this is a really involved job.
Don't do this job yet. Just keep an eye on things and prepare yourself to do it down the track, when you have assured dry storage and all necessary tools and motivation.

A windscreen specialist may be able to salvage the screen (if its worth it).
I presume they will use some sort of powered device to buzz it out. For those unfamiliar with removing bonded screens you CANNOT get them out manually with a blade. I had a rear screen removed but the windscreen guy didn't allow me to watch (weirdo).

Once you have the screen out you have to get down to the metal.
The urethane used to bond the screen to the frame is not easy to remove.
First run a sharp blade over it to get the bulk of it off.
A wire wheel on a drill or die grinder takes ages but is fairly effective.
A little bit of heat from a heat gun does speed things up.
Its a very tiring job.
Its hard to get into corners and around the trim mounting studs.
You will find rust.
It will need a proper (mig welded) repair.
You will need to buy plastic moulding clips from mazda and there are x 18 of them (on a coupe front screen anyway).

As a bonus though we can salvage some repair sections from another car and weld them in.

I suggest as part of this job you tackle the air vent hole in the roof and weld up the old spoiler holes, tap a few dents out and respray the entire roof, A-pillars and the plenum below the screen.

Just focus on doing things that make the car run and get it closer to obtaining registration.

Otherwise you wind up in a vicous cycle of constant unfinished repairs and loss of motivation.

ALso if you are planning to take this on a long trip in all liklihood you will need a new screen by the end of it.

removing the windscreens is very easy and shouldnt take more than 5 - 10 minutes. Remove the stainless trims and then look for the copper wire that runs through the sealant. Connect the ends of the wire to a 12v supply and a couple of minutes latter the windscreen will come out like nothings holding it. The copper wire melts the sealant for easy removal. A windcreen guy will install the screen using a similar method.

On my car there was no screen in it, just some remnant jagged glass that i sliced my hand open on. Presumably they smashed the rear screen because i didn't get one with it.

i have found on some cars the wire is broken and doesn't make a circuit or its missing. Tried this on XDEF model Fords with no joy in the past. And yet when the windscreen guys do it they just smash the screen out anyway!

...and the windscreen guy i used definitely used some sort of powered cutter. It may be the type that has a blade that "vibrates" rather than turns. I dunno what you call that thing but i know someone with one (Jed Simmons) who demonstrated it to me cutting through body panels, so i assume it would have no issue going through urethane/hardened sikaflex.

Even once you get the screen out (assuming you do use the hot wire method) then you still have to clean off the old gunk and fix the rust.

I just went to put the car in the garage but I can't find the keys to move the other car out, so I'm on here instead.

Rubber door seal photos:

Drivers door. The rubber has basically dried out and begun to fall apart. This was also letting water inside.

I had to stick my thumb in there to give the phone something to focus on

4 new door seals from Rare Spares. Better late than never I suppose.

Lifting away the original rubber door seal exposes how poor Mazda painting was back in the 60's and 70's, there is little or no paint in the track where the door seal clips in. In a sea side suburb these doors would have been cactus (like the yellow parts car was).

The seals were pretty easy to fit, you just line up the corner join in the seal with the door frame edge, then press it in.

And work your way around the door, pressing the plastic clip into the factory holes. The clips fitted into all of the factory holes, I did use a punch to press the clips all the way through though so that the seal was snug up to the door frame.

This was the seal from the front passenger door, this one leaked the most!

Hoges, I have saved you all of the plastic clips if you need them for your seals, they're also handy for blocking off holes (ie floorpan holes for other clips etc)

Apologies for the blurry photos, my phone camera is usually very good, it was playing up that day for some reason.

A few weeks ago I bought a "moulded" carpet set. From reading around, I knew that the company that I went through weren't too crash hot in terms of fit. Sure enough, they weren't, BUT, it was cheap, its a pretty close match to the loop pile that was in the wagon originally and I basically wanted something to cover the floor.

So, firstly I layed down some insulation around the front area. I didn't want a lot, because I'm trying to keep the car light, but I did want to try to dampen some road noise, as it can be tiring over long distances.

What I did was replicate the factory carpet. I cut a piece for the front floorpan where the front two people would place their feet, then I cut another piece for the trans tunnel. I also cut two more peices for the rear seat foot areas.

Then, while I was listening to the radio on a bit of a classic...

I layed out the moulded carpet section for the front. Originally in a old Mazda there are usually 5 pieces of carpet. One for the driver, one for the front passenger, one for the front of the transmission tunnel and one for the entire rear area. The moulded carpet only came in two sections. It was also oversized (which is kinda good in that you can trim it down to suit), but it was also way out of kilter (it wasn't following the floorpan shape) when placed over the transmission tunnel. So I layed the front section out in the sun for a bit to soften the glue backing and moved onto the rear section.

^judging where to make the hole for the handbrake lever.

The rear section wasn't as bad as the front as I had the original carpet from the rear of my old yellow parts wagon. So I layed the old carpet over the new and trimmed it down to suit.

It was a struggle, but I got it to fit reasonably well, no big bulges, nice and tight. I may tweek the fitting a bit when I take the sill trims off again for the headliner to be replaced but I am pretty happy with the fit.
I also got cracking on the front. I managed to get the front carpet nicely shaped:

The finished edging lined up with the front seat mounts

I also got the plastic foot panel to fit right where I wanted it. I took hours to get sorted. The hardest part was locating the holes in the floor (and then making corresponding holes in the carpet) for the two bolts for the accelerator pedal.

What I did was use a metal skewer (actually a sharpened broken aerial) and poke the floorpan until I found the sunken hole for the bolt. Then I poked the skewer through, made the hole a bit bigger, then screwed the bolt through. Mind you, that old addage of measure twice cut once, I must have checked about 9 times for each bolt hole!

The last thing to do was to make the hole for the gearstick.

Ta da!

Tomorrow I'm fitting up all of my tie rod ends, zinc'd tie rods, powdercoated drag link and some other bits. I'm looking forward to it as it should finish the front end off and it will be another big tick on my list.
Ive also got to drop some steel wheels off to have the tyres removed so that I can get them powdercoated.

*edit* swmbo noticed that the handbrake lever boot and gearstick boot are tatty and is going to try and get some new ones knocked up in black leather.

As for you gearshift lever boot I will let one of my restoration secrets out. Find a sunroof bag from a S1-2 Rx7 they used the same material in those as they did for the shift boots up through the S1 Rx7s. (of course this doesn't apply if it is a rubber boot like in the R100s or if the car was optioned special with leather. But for all the REGULAR RXs that is a match for the material used. When you first make one you might think I am crazy but remember all of the ones we have seen aren't NOS and have been used and beaten up for years. I managed to come across a couple of NOS ones and that was how I made the connection. So now I snap up the sunroof bags from the junkyards even if they have tears and bad spots.

I would be interested in some of your reproduction stickers as we are restoring 2 very early Rx4 coupes now.